Dancing makes it all better

More wacked out, old, but unseen comics. My home life is exactly like this.

Which Side Are You On?

Reading this post on the Fagstein blog, makes me think: Is the message getting out? People passing by can read "Writers Guild of America" but do the rest of the initials mean anything to them?



Maybe we should put on puppet shows to tell the story, or get an award-winning songwriter to do the chants. Maybe demonstrations are more for the demonstrators, rather than the folks on the street, who more often complain about the space we're taking up.

Montreal Writers hit the Streets!

I thought the Writers Guild of Canada demonstration in front of the SARTEC (Société des Auteurs de Radio, Télévision et Cinéma) Offices in downtown Montreal was going to be a low-key affair. Meeting about six shivering writers at 10:30 in the morning, with more media present than demonstrators was what I expected. But the crowd filled out, someone broke out placards, and we got to make quite a nice little march along the street, as you can see in the videos below. We writers are mad as hell, but that doesn't mean we can't still be polite! (please click the photo above for more exciting images)

Blog Post about the Toronto March here! Video en français here!



I had learned the words better once we got further down the street, to the TVA building.

Back to Sketches

More Expozine

Just summing up the 2 posts below: Here's photos from day 1. This is day 2. Any comments, corrections or additions are greatly appreciated, thanks!

Here's another person's set of photos, which zooms out a little and gives a neat overall impression of the event: [link]




These are sketches I drew at Expozine 2007 this weekend. Now, I will get to labelling all of those photos in the flickr set.

Well, that's done. Apologies to people I shot, gave cards too, and then left out because thier photos were too blurry even for me. Thiswaystupidbird, for one.



These are two women, above, by the way.



Here's a movie of Sirkowski's rat at the exhib.:

Expozine, 2007, Day Two

So, I posted my shots taken at Expozine in Montreal, today. Will take a bit of time to identify everyone, and I'll add to this post. Four of the pics didn't work out (when you see the ones that went up, you'll know that they weren't usable).

Click on the pic above to visit the flickr stream.

Expozine 2007, Day One

I've put up the photos taken at Expozine today. Haven't correlated all the info I took down for the captions yet, but will do it this evening, and tomorrow.

Well, that didn't work as well as I hoped, because the pictures didn't upload in the order I took them in, and it was hard to remember all the faces, which names went with which. I think generally I did not too bad.

In the meantime, people might like to look at the pics. There's a virtue in being fast with this sort of thing. Please click on the photo above to begin the adventure.

Lots of stuff Friday

I've got strange friends.



Menu drawing by R. Gagnon and myself. I added the hippie, which he filled in.

Meet James Ensor, Belgium's famous painter:



What's going on with his hand?

Below, sketch by Eric Theriault, of the happy-go-lucky Leader of the Solar Temple:



That evening, we went to a launch of some books at Paragraphe Books, which I am sad to see is no longer an independent bookstore, but bought up by a chain. Still, it's a cool store.

Arrived a little late, which was all right for me. I'm not a fan of readings at book launchings. (But sadly, my friend Rick didn't get to hear his friend Claude Lalumiere, read from his story published in the Canadian SF anthology Tesseracts 11.) I did catch one reading, which was more like a story recalled, by Brett Savory, whom I drew, below.

Brett was promoting his book In and Down.



Also met Nairne Holtz, whose name I bobbled. Hope that linking to one of her books she showed me at the store, The Skin Beneath, helps make up for that.

Montreal Writers Rally in Support of striking WGA workers

Wednesday November 28, there will be a Writer's Guild of Canada rally in support of the Writers Guild of America film and TV writers' strike, at 10:30 am in front of the SARTEC Offices, 1229, rue Panet, Montreal - between Rene-Levesque and Ste.-Catherine. It's not a strike or picket. It's for supporting fair contracts for creators. Everyone's invited. The demo will last until noon.

Command Centre

"Get me the President!"

This is a sketch for a watercolour painting.

Historical Types

More historical types.

Goddess of Blah

Maybe just the High Priestess. Drew this last night, after a dinner with a lot of wine and some metaphysically-preoccupied friends. I don't know if people are cheesed if I'm drawing while they're talking.

Bonnet Cat Take 2

So, here's the second version. Took five minutes to draw. No pencil underdrawing, or dodgy perspective. I might adjust the gait a little. But with colour, this could make hundreds of dollars. Still, I draw the big awkward ones to learn, and they're fun to do.

Cat in Baby Bonnet

I could have done this in a much lighter style, like this artist did.

Watercolour Wash People

Faster to do, and I think they look cool, but they're difficult to reproduce. The one below was entirely repainted with another layer, because the colour of blue I first used didn't show up well on the scanner.

Street Patrol and cartoonist maxims.

Large-format pictures are tough for me, because there's more chance to go wrong, and show off my shaky drawing chops; need for practice in spotting tones and blacks.

Did this one because of a quote from Art Spiegelman I googled for, and found a version on this page: Never stipple if you can hatch, better yet, use black.

By the way, guys, way to suck the fun out of cartooning! (Still, I'm a one time comics educator, and they have some good lessons. All the same, it does remind me of the cartoon about some pupil getting detention for scribbling math problems in the margins of her cartoon homework.)

Obviously, I don't subscribe to Art's maxim, but am trying to do what I do better.

Below is another resurrected watercolour from the files. I work on these a bit (this was from "copying photographs in order to get a likeness"), but sometimes they strike me as so lame, I put them away (I don't chuck much out, but stick it in the closet). Then a year or so later, I can look at it, and aspects of it don't seem so bad. I enhanced the flesh tones, and like the cartoon details in back.

Girl and her Dog

Picture I found in my files, which I finished, and now doesn't look so bad.

Watercolour Women

Two sisters, with very different lives. One works part-time at a dollar store in Verdun, while the other is a princess in the far away kingdom of Hybrasia. They correspond, periodically, but never really understand each other. It's a sad story, made worse by the fact that a dictatorship will overrun and annex Hybrasia, which means the sisters will have to move in together and share a single-room flat. Can they find happiness and re-affirm their sisterhood? Will Hugh Grant show up in the second act?

(As well as painting pictures, I'm also doing screenwriter-boy movie pitches. Can you tell? This one is to be directed by Anthony Minghella.)

The title on the poster means that I ran out of room.

Musical Cat

This is the famous opera singer Donna Livia Dolorosa, and her musical cat, Solti.

Sketchbook Faces

Turmoil, conflict, human emotion. These make the best stories.

Okay: Sam Rice (centre) is a small-time agent and impresario. His most popular act is (are?) the Deeter Sisters (R&L), who perform Bluegrass and blue-eyed gospel, sometimes to very redneck audiences, who do not 'cotton' to Mr. Rice. Complications ensue, as they tour the United States, in early 1960s!

Guest appearance by Denzel Washington.

Where does it all go?

This is old. Last century, even. I didn't have an idea what it was about until it was finished.

Alien Attack!

This is an elaborate picture that took me a while. Unfortunately, it's based on a drawing I thought was cool, with a funny story behind it. But I don't have the link, or the drawing anymore, so the story's not so funny. Anyhow, a veteran artist, Russ Manning, I think, was commissioned to do a comic book cover of this female character fighting an "Alien" from the series of movies. Russ Manning said he didn't need reference to draw the Alien, and then handed in a splendid drawing with a big monster that had nothing to do with the movies.

So, this monster is mine (steel diapers?), and the lady is copied from Manning's line drawing. It's fun drawing elaborate things, and I hope they only get better.

Photo Gagnon

Just this drawing for this week's Gagnon Friday. Of course, if I continue letting him go over my pencil drawings, I'll never learn to ink on my own. Aww, what the heck, it's fun to watch, and opens me up to another style.

Gag-"non" Cartoons

I'm writing wordy comments on other people's blogs. Should rather save the eloquence for my own blog.

Anyhow, was commenting on an interesting post in Mike Lynch's Gag Cartoon blog, which has kind of inspired me to do a bunch of single panel cartoons and send them out to magazines. Been quiet as far as work this past month or two, but looking over old things gets me back into the game.

These are five-year old panel cartoons which I wrote and then were inked by Rick Gagnon, my usual collaborator. Copyright Rick and I. The artwork in the logo is by cartoonist Jeff Leblanc.




But I want to do all my own work on the new ones, because I can have more control of where they go. These, we only sent to Reader's Digest, got rejected, and then they ended up in Rick's zine, from which I took these scans. I would have rather sent to more places first, but if I create the whole thing, I can send out and get rejected as much as I want.

Watercolour Heater Cats

Couldn't resist.

This Season's Heater Cats

I lit the pilot on the ancient Coleman (1930s 40s?) heater that warms this apartment. That means I've got heater cats again, a sure sign of approaching winter. Tried to put a little mat on top, to stop me having to vacuum cat hair out of the appliance when I wanted to turn it up, but they pushed it off.

Below, a not too bad drawing of George Strombolopolis, from the CBC's late night talk show, with an imaginary manic cheerleader behind him. For no reason.



Finally, a day-late sketch of Guy Fawkes, via V for Vendetta, wearing a less than fashionable pointy hat.

Elevated Freeway

This looks like a Saudi princeling standing under an elevated freeway, with a contrite dragon dog in the background. What am I getting at with this? I'll figure it out later.

Brush Pen

A page of brush pen drawings. The dancer is on fire because I've been listening to Stravinsky's "Firebird" ballet music.

Other drawings on the page behind are showing through in a ghostly way I'd want to take care of if this were being scanned for printing, or otherwise.

Happy Dog Friend

The scowling boy from the earlier post gets a happy dog friend, and a worried mom.